Dark Space
by KSCrusaders
Summary: Mass Effect kmeme fill. AU in which Saren does not die during the battle of the Citadel, but instead is rescued by Shepard to join her cause against the Reapers. Circumstances force old enemies to be allies, and maybe something more. FemShep/Saren, spoilers for ME1 & ME2.
1. Chapter 1

**Dark Space**

_By KSCrusaders (Sable Rhapsody on BSN)_

Everything would be so much easier if he could hate her. Spirits, he just wanted to hate her, more than he wanted to die.

He could hear her voice as he faded in and out of consciousness in the sterile white medical bay of some classified Alliance research station. She was talking with another human, a female. It was the same conversation, over and over again.

"..._need_ him," said Shepard insistently. "I need to know what he knows."

"Dear God, Commander, be reasonable!" The other voice grew more and more exasperated with each iteration of the conversation.

"...can remove the Reaper implants. That's all. I make no guarantee of his psychological state."

"...not implanting him with a control device, God damn it! I'm not sinking to the level of the Reapers." There was a finality to Shepard's tone the last time she visited, and the other human sighed in resignation.

"Fine. But I _am_ implanting him with a failsafe. I'm not bringing him back without giving you the means to terminate him for good."

Then Shepard left. For minutes, days, years...it was all the same to him. Sometimes his befuddled ears caught the whirring of drills, followed by racking pain to his legs and arms, tightly strapped to the examination table. Whomever Shepard was talking to apparently didn't believe in anesthetic.

Not that he didn't deserve it.

Light, pain, drills, drugged sleep. He drifted in and out of it in a kind of disconnected haze. He waited for Shepard to change her mind, silently pleading with her to let him die. He might as well have pleaded with a metal bulkhead for all the good it did him. He remembered with bitter humor that once Shepard set her mind to something, she never let go, like a thrice-damned varren.

Then one day, it all stopped abruptly. The room was silent as a tomb apart from the ever-present beep of medical equipment. For a moment, he felt horror, though he didn't know why. Then slowly, the realization dawned on him.

The song was gone. The sweet, low hum of the Reapers. It all came back to him in a flash of terrible clarity.

Shepard's words on the Citadel, his own struggle with Sovereign. He remembered putting his gun to his temple, but never had time to pull the trigger. Her tech mine detonated first, and everything went black.

Saren opened one eye, the lids feeling as heavy as lead. He quickly shut it with a hiss as blazing white light streamed in.

There was a click, then the sound of swift footsteps crossing the floor. On instinct, Saren tried to move; thick metal restraints pinned him to the gurney, and white-hot pain shot along his spine.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Human. Female. Not Shepard, but the second voice. He heard the beeping of an omnitool, saw orange through his closed eyelids.

"Shepard," he managed to whisper through damaged lungs.

The human didn't respond. Cold, gloved hands pushed against the bandages swathing his limbs and neck, hard enough to make him clench his teeth. The light changed from orange to green, and the human spoke again, but not to him.

"Commander. It's ready for retrieval." There was a pause as Shepard said something unintelligible. "I don't care, Shepard. Whatever happens is your damn responsibility now. Lawson out."


	2. Chapter 2

"Christ on a cracker. He looks awful."

Shepard stared at the ruined wreck of a turian through the med bay's glass. She was seized by the mad urge to laugh; swathed in bandages and hooked up to medical machines of all shapes and sizes, he looked like some sort of futuristic Earth mummy.

"We ended up removing all of his cybernetics just to be safe, regardless of origin," said Miranda Lawson calmly. "We implanted new ones for vital structures."

"Like his arm?" said Shepard testily. The geth arm had been replaced by one of black metal and wire.

Miranda shrugged. "He's clean, as far as we can tell. The rest is your problem. I just need your omnitool before we release him."

Shepard handed it over cautiously. Miranda inspected the omnitool minutely, then transfered a program from her omnitool to Shepard's. In the medical bay, Saren's spine went rigid with a sudden spasm.

Shepard looked on in concern, but Miranda brushed it off. "Just a minor side effect of transfering control of his neural implant."

"Neural implant?" spluttered Shepard angrily. She looked like she wanted to say more, but Miranda held up a hand and cut her off.

"I told you I wasn't bringing him back without a failsafe." She gave the omnitool back and handed Shepard what looked like a small detonator. "Two ways of terminating him if he gets out of hand, either the omnitool or the detonator. The detonator is pretty much fool-proof, connected to the implant with a miniature quantum entanglement device. Either flip the switch or input the code via omnitool, and the implant will burn out his nervous system. Irreversible, of course."

Shepard's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Miranda added, "Don't think about trying to remove it. It's embedded in his brainstem. Tamper with it, and you'll destroy his vital life support functions."

"You brought him back with a gun to his head," said Shepard slowly.

Miranda folded her arms, her face hardening. "Don't get self-righteous with me, Shepard. You brought him to Cerberus because we had the know how and we were off the official Alliance grid. How many of your crew know about this abomination?"

Shepard's shoulders slumped a little. She rubbed her temples, trying not to imagine the expressions on her crew's faces when she told them what she'd done. That was a conversation she didn't want to have as long as she could avoid it.

"What about Captain Anderson?" Miranda pressed. "Does he have any idea?"

Shepard controlled her anger with a visible effort, turning back to the window. Saren's body was relaxed again, no longer straining against the thick metal cuffs. His eyes moved restlessly in their sockets, but he was unable to turn his head, strapped into place by a cage-like mesh. He looked pathetic, nothing like the fearsome rogue Spectre who had haunted her nightmares for the better part of a year.

"Can he hear us?" she asked Miranda.

"He's conscious now, so I'd say yes," said Miranda indifferently. "I've already called for a medical shuttle. It'll be ready for you in under an hour."

"You can't honestly expect me to move him in this condition," said Shepard incredulously. More to the point, the last thing she wanted was to take Saren in such a weakened condition to the Normandy. She didn't put it past Garrus to stick a knife in the former Spectre's neck.

Maybe Miranda knew more than she let on, because her face softened just a little. "I want him off this station," she said. "The shuttle's taking you to another Cerberus research station. He can recover there, and if you want, you can stay to monitor his psychological state. But I wash my hands of this now."

The first human Spectre looked from Miranda back to Saren on the operating table. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Miranda shook her head. "See if you still feel that way once he's lucid." She turned on her heel and left Shepard alone in the hallway, staring at the husk of the man she'd saved and destroyed. Feeling as though her legs had turned into lead, she walked into the sick bay.

"What the hell am I going to do with you?" she sighed as she sat next to Saren's gurney in the new medical station. Blue eyes turned toward her, burning with something that could be charitably described as loathing. Whether directed toward her or himself, she couldn't tell.

You could let me die, thought Saren bitterly. You could open that airlock and let me go. You could shut off that goddamned news report blaring over the speakers.

Hate you, he repeated inside his head, watching her checking the medical equipment for the umpteenth time. Hate you, hate you, hate you. Maybe repetition would help his conviction.

There was pity in those large watery human eyes when they turned back toward him, and he seethed from his position on the bed. He didn't want her pity. He didn't want her mercy. He wanted her to end it, and she knew that. Human fingers, much gentler than Lawson's, felt through the mesh holding his head in place to the base of his neck. The metal plate of the neural implant just poked through, and she sighed heavily.

"I know you want me to use this on you," she said quietly. "But in case it escaped your notice while you were wallowing in self-pity, I want to give you a chance to undo the mess you made."

Saren could only stare after her in high astonishment as she administered a mild sedative and got to her feet. She was at the door before she turned around to look back at him, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"You'll thank me someday. I hope."

You're wrong, he thought fiercely as the sedative gently but insistently pulled him under.

Shepard watched him fall still. At that moment, she wished she was a more ruthless person, more like Miranda Lawson. If she had been, she wouldn't feel compelled to help the man who'd tried to kill her time and again. But just a touch of her Catholic upbringing had stuck, just enough to cause her trouble. The idea that everyone, even Saren Arterius, deserved a chance at redemption was one she couldn't shake no matter how hard she tried.

She could justify it to Miranda, or even to her crew as necessary. Saren had more knowledge on the Reapers than any living person. She needed that information badly. But if she was honest with herself, the data rattling around inside his head was inconsequential.

She didn't want to save his knowledge-she wanted to save HIM.

She wasn't a psychologist or a medical expert. She didn't even know if Miranda's attempt at eradicating his implants had worked. But she WAS the last person in the galaxy who gave a damn about Saren Arterius.

She could work with that.


	3. Chapter 3

When Saren finally emerged from his sedated sleep, he felt a little more clear-headed. Shepard had seen fit to give him some anesthetic. He took a few experimental breaths; he was still hooked up to oxygen machines, but Shepard had drastically cut down on the number of tubes sticking out of his body.

Just the thought of Shepard made him want to howl, but it only took a few minutes for Saren to find something he found even more intolerable than her.

The silence.

Saren ground his teeth together for some sound apart from the steady beat of his heart monitor, but the silence still pressed on him like a living thing. He'd spent the last decade drowning in the whispers of the Reapers. Now those voices were silenced, and for the first time since his awakening, he felt something other than resentment or numb indifference.

Panic.

He writhed against the restraints holding him down to no avail, and he had no energy for biotics. The healing wounds from Cerberus's brutal surgery stung as he strained. Frantic beeping issued from the heart monitor, but even that didn't pierce the smothering quiet that now surrounded him in the darkness like some kind of horrible creature.

He wanted to scream, but it came out as a kind of muffled croak from his struggling lungs. The voices had to come back, he had to summon them again or-

"Hey, _hey_! Calm down. It's me."

Saren held onto the voice like a drowning man; it might be Shepard's, but anything was better than the silence. Human hands dabbed icy sweat from his brow, human arms held him gingerly until he slowly ceased his struggles. And all the while, he clung to the sound of her voice.

He had no idea what she was talking about, but it filled the void. He didn't even have the energy left to hate himself for using her like a crutch. Gradually, Saren opened his eyes and saw Shepard's large brown ones looking back at him in dim light.

She fell silent, but Saren grabbed for her with his new cybernetic arm. She looked startled for a moment, but she caught on quickly as the metallic fingers scrabbled against the bed.

"OK, ok, I get it," she said. "All right. Just hold still for a little while. I'm going to make sure you haven't done any permanent damage to yourself."

She spoke slowly, and the meaning of her words eventually penetrated Saren's fear-logged brain. He wanted to cringe away from her touch, her voice, everything about her, but she was the only thing anchoring him, keeping him from drifting off into the void.

"Do you want more of the lights on?" she asked. "One blink for yes, two for no."

He blinked once, and with a few strokes of her omnitool, a few more of the lights flickered on. It stung his eyes, but he honestly didn't care at this point.

"I'm sorry," said Shepard as she slowly unwound his bandages. "I figured the sedative would keep you under for a little longer. But in my defense, I didn't really know what to anticipate once you started thinking more clearly."

It still felt like his mind was working through a receding fog. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted the fog to disappear. He had a vague but ominous sense of apprehension for what might happen when it did.

"Are you feeling claustrophobic?" Again, a single blink. Shepard paused for a moment, then her hands came up and unhooked his breathing mask, detaching it from the oxygen tube. Saren stretched his jaw and mandibles reflexively, taking his first gulp of (mostly) unaided air.

There were thousands of things he wanted to say to her, but he didn't have the strength. So he settled for staring at her while she chattered away and checked his wounds. Anything to distract him from the emptiness left by the Reapers.

She had a scar across one cheek, something he'd noticed when he held her by the throat on Virmire. She had abnormally long fingers for a human, thin and tapered; she looked utterly inadequate to the impossible task she'd appointed for herself.

But she wasn't the one strapped to a gurney. Saren allowed her voice to wash over him and felt exhaustion carry him off to the blackness again. This time, before he lost consciousness, he reached for her with his natural hand, and felt little human fingers close around his.

* * *

The next morning found Shepard in the station's mess, helping herself to bagels and the better part of a pot of coffee. She couldn't say she'd slept fantastically, but at least Saren was sleeping without drugs.

Shepard followed the strains of music down the hallway toward Saren's room. Silence seemed to distress him, so she'd turned up the extranet radio in his chamber. She had no idea how he could sleep with the din.

The turian was awake, and his eyes immediately snapped to her as she entered. His gaze lingered on the bagels.

"Don't be stupid," she said.

Saren narrowed his eyes at her in his best approximation of a scowl. He took a few breaths. Finally, he said in a hoarse croak, "What did you tell your crew?"

Shepard didn't catch every word, but what she did hear was more than enough. She turned off the music and glared at him.

"What, no 'good morning and thanks for saving my ass?'" When Saren continued to give her that imperturbable stare, she just shook her head. "I told them it was Spectre business."

Saren shook his head as much as the restraints would allow. He tested his muscles a little; he was tired already of being physically strapped to a bed. "So I'm your prisoner," he said, his voice growing stronger.

Shepard could hardly believe her eyes. The panicked, terrified, broken man she'd seen the night before bore no resemblence to the defiant turian staring her down. For the first time since Sovereign's defeat, she felt a lick of fear looking into Saren's eyes.

"No, just an idiot," she said testily. "You told me you wanted to help. You just thought it was too late for you." She paused, looking down at her feet.

"I...disagreed."

Saren looked away. It wasn't her he wanted to forget; it was the other force moving him with deadly purpose. He still knew exactly what the clarion call of the Reapers sounded like in his bones.

He squeezed his eyes shut and took another deep breath. He didn't want to remember any of it. It hovered at the edge of his growing consciousness like a monster waiting to pounce. He tried pushing it aside, but his long association with Sovereign had broken down much of his will.

Unbidden, their faces floated before his eyes. Benezia. Williams. And with a dull thrill of guilt, Nihlus. It was all beginning to trickle back, and he was powerless to stop it.

"Saren. Open your eyes._ Look at me_."

It was the first time he'd ever heard her use his name. His eyes flew open and locked on hers. She dropped her breakfast and placed both of her hands on his, prying them open with surprising strength, her face inches away from his.

"You need to talk to me," she said, eyes glinting. "It's not going to get any better unless you let me help you."

"Go to hell," he hissed. His pride wasn't so broken yet that he'd just let her jerk him around like a trophy...or a pet.

"I already am for saving your hide," she said with a shrug. "And so are you. Might as well make the most of it."

She stopped talking. This time, it took a full minute for the silence to become a choking, physical thing. Saren closed his eyes again; he didn't need a human to master himself.

"Saren?"

No, no, no. He didn't want her. He wanted the song again, the sweet whisper from beyond the galaxy's farthest edge. He craved it as much as he feared it.

"I must not fear."

The silence disappeared, and the memories of Sovereign's hiss eased their flow for a fraction of a second.

"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."

He felt Shepard's hand on his cybernetic one, and reflexively, he squeezed back.

"I will face my fear," Shepard continued in that eerily calm voice. "I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path."

He opened his eyes to see a smile barely touch her face. "Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

There was silence again, benign. For the first time in a decade, he knew peace without the hum of the Reapers. He only wished he didn't owe it all to her.


	4. Chapter 4

In the three days that followed, the silences got better. Saren even allowed Shepard to turn the music down at night so she could get some decent sleep. But his dreams, now uninhibited by morphine, grew steadily worse. He hid it successfully from Shepard at first, but the stronger he grew, the louder the hisses became.

It wasn't the bone-deep rumble of the Reapers. These voices whispered other things in the night. He heard Benezia's voice the loudest, and sometimes a tri-headed thing also shrieked in his ear.

_Traitor,_ they whispered. _Murderer._

_Coward._

_Spectre...sworn to defend the galaxy._

_Betrayed the Council...to save yourself._

Some of the words were Shepard's from Virmire, half a lifetime ago. But her voice wasn't among his accusers, and that was at least small comfort. He was stuck with her during the day against his will. He wasn't really sure he wanted her in his nightmares too.

He kept repeating the litany she taught him. The words might be from Shepard, but using them certainly beat going insane. He woke with it. He went to sleep with it.

_Saren._

This voice was different, and it did not continue to hiss. Saren tossed restlessly in the medical cot, caught once again in the throes of nightmare. The voice said his name again and again, always in the same tone of curious surprise.

Something heavy and wet touched his feet. He looked down at his hands, found them covered with blue blood. The soft blurred light of nightmare slowly intensified until he could make out the shape at his feet.

Nihlus's dead eyes, eternally open, gazed back at him, the breathless mouth repeating his name over and over again. Saren leapt back in horror as Nihlus rolled forward toward him, bits of skull and flesh spilling from the hole in the back of his head.

_Saren?_

I must not fear, he told himself frantically. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is-

_SAREN?_

Nihlus's limbs, stiff with rigor mortis, moved as though puppeted, dragging the dead weight of his torso upright as spinal fluid and blood dripped down his armor. The hands flexed, relaxed, scrabbling toward him.

Shepard, thought Saren with a sudden flash of inspiration. This is Shepard's doing, not mine. Nihlus-

The deadened eyes suddenly flared with hate, and Nihlus lunged, stiff fingers reaching for Saren's ankle. Saren found himself rooted to the spot, unable to move as the ghastly remnants of his student, his friend, crawled toward him with deadly purpose.

He was done fighting. He'd tried and failed. Shepard was right about a lot of things; he had to concede that. But she was wrong about him.


	5. Chapter 5

"Nihlus hates you, you know. For saving me. He told me last night."

Saren's fierce blue eyes were dull, his face placid. No, not placid. Blank. Hollow, just like his voice. He turned his head to watch Shepard as she slowly advanced toward him, mechanically tracing her movements. Shepard opened her mouth, closed it, a myriad of things he couldn't care about flitting across her face. She turned around, her shoulders falling, and Saren felt a distant, dull sense of relief. She'd given up.

Then her fist connected squarely with his still-bandaged jaw. Saren howled involuntarily as white-hot pain seared along his cranium. The wheeled gurney slammed into the wall, jolting his spine and dislodging two of the IVs, which tipped over with a resounding crash. Shepard closed the distance between them with two quick strides. She reached back and he thought she was going to slug him again, but instead, she whipped out her omnitool and held it in front of his stinging eyes.

A news broadcast cropped up. "Rumors of disappearing human Alliance colonies in the Traverse have recently been confirmed by top military officials. The Alliance has promised to look into the disappearances. Inside sources claim Commander Shepard will lead the investigation, though no team has been formally announced."

Saren glared at her through his watering eyes, pain and anger temporarily burning through his numbness. "I don't give a damn about your colonies, Shepard."

"You want to help undo your mess or not?" she snapped, turning off the broadcast. "Or is the best Spectre in the galaxy's history going to pass the buck to a mere _human_?"

He knew she was baiting him, but that didn't stop the white-hot fury that started curling in his guts as she prodded old wounds. He tried to lean forward, straining against the metal.

Shepard leaned forward too, just barely out of reach of his cybernetic arm. "If you're really just going to sit here and let your demons win while the galaxy's at stake, then you never really were a Spectre in the first place. So here."

Something small and cylindrical was forced into his cybernetic hand. He looked down at it...and found himself holding the detonator for his implant. Incensed, he hurled it back into Shepard's face without a second thought.

The metal cylinder hit the side of her cheek, right along the scar. She didn't even wince. Instead, she straightened up and grinned.

"That's better. More like the Saren I know."

"I hate you," he spat, and at that exact moment, he really meant it.

"About goddamn time," she said, unfazed. "Better me than yourself." He felt the restraints on his arms and legs retract back into the gurney and didn't even care why. That loathing for humanity, for everything about her from her eyes to her goading smile, now burned again within him like a flame.

He leveraged himself off the bed for the first time in spirits knew how long. His legs struggled to support his weight, but he took one step toward her, then another, flexing his new cybernetic arm. She didn't move.

Saren swung once. Missed. The second swing connected with her shoulder, and he heard the crackle and hiss of her kinetic barriers. His talons caught the edge of her uniform, leaving a six inch rip along her arm.

She didn't even flinch.

He needed to bring her down, needed to prove to her that like him, she could be brought low. He lashed out at her again and again, ignoring the trembling in his limbs until his legs gave out underneath him. Only then did she shift, dropping to her knees to catch him as he crumpled.

Bruises formed on the light skin of her exposed arms where a few lucky hits had connected, and her shoulder bled from his talons. She struggled for a little bit to support his dead weight, but finally managed to wiggle into a comfortable position with his head resting against her uninjured shoulder.

"Feel better?" she asked quietly.

Something inside him, locked up ever since he encountered Sovereign, came undone with a snap. He had himself back. Liberating...and terrifying, with his toes just at the edge of a void. He allowed her to support him for a few minutes before forcing himself to his feet and stumbling back over to his gurney.

"You've only yourself to blame," said Saren, watching her rub medigel on her shoulder. Shepard merely turned toward his seated position on the medical bed with a wicked grin.

"I know." She pulled the ripped uniform over her head and dumped it into the biohazard bin, revealing a sleeveless black undershirt.

"You could have killed me," he said. He stiffly reached over to the medigel dispenser attached to his gurney. "I doubt Cerberus would have been thrilled."

"Lawson? She would've thrown a fucking party."

Saren's eyes narrowed. He could still feel the phantom weight of the death he'd rejected in his hand. His heart beat faster, stronger than it had since the Citadel. And though his limbs still shook from their overexertion after spirits knew how long as an invalid, he could feel licks of his old strength returning. "What do you want from me, Shepard? Information?"

Shepard made a noncommittal sound and carefully wiped off the excess medigel. Three pale red lines were all that remained of his violence a half hour ago. Her mouth was moving, but suddenly he couldn't hear her speaking.

His vision blurred into a haze of color and strange, scraping sounds. He staggered, slumping awkwardly against the gurney, eyes unfocused. His cybernetic hand spasmed reflexively as the deep cry of the Reapers tore like fire through his memory.

Then suddenly, it was over. Shepard had her hands on his shoulders. He brushed her off brusquely and settled himself back on the bed.

"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. "Probably a dissociative episode. Lawson mentioned you might have those from time to time."

Saren didn't reply. In his head, he silently repeated the mantra she'd taught him, over and over again until the memory began to fade in earnest.

"You didn't answer my question," he said. "You humans don't do anything without some angle. What do you want with me?"

Shepard drew a deep breath, her shoulders tensing. He'd made her angry.

"Has it ever occurred to you that if all I wanted was the information in your sorry head, none of this additional treatment would be necessary?" She turned toward him, her smile turning cold and hard. "Lawson assures me she's very good at getting information from people."

Saren merely crossed his arms, but he couldn't help the shiver that ran up his spine at the memory of his surgery. He was trained to resist torture and interrogation, but he knew his mental state at the time would not have been strong enough.

"Ah, I see," he said bitterly. "You intend to gloat."

He heard the crack of her knuckles, but she didn't hit him again, to his surprise and mild disappointment. Instead, she crossed to the storage locker on the other side of the medical bay and pulled out a large, thick mat that she laid on the floor.

"I _intend_ to get you back into fighting form even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming," she said coldly. "And after that, I intend to head out to the Traverse and find out why our colonists are disappearing. Your ass is coming with me."

"So you can reform me?" said Saren with a bitter laugh.

"Don't be a self-loathing bitch, it doesn't suit you," snapped Shepard. She activated her omnitool and projected an image onto the blank white wall of the medical bay.

His own Spectre induction, decades ago. Saren leaned forward, his jaw dropping a little in astonishment. His own eyes met the fierce eyes of the young turian staring defiantly out at the spectators who believed he was too young, too green. He'd proven them wrong.

No one believed it was possible to recover from indoctrination. Not even Lawson had expected him to survive his brutal reconstruction. Saren took a deep breath, looking not at Shepard, but at the boy from his past.

"So that's it," he said quietly. "Just shape up and act like a Spectre."

"Damn well couldn't hurt."

He knew it was Shepard's voice responding, but the eyes in the projection flickered, almost alive. Finally, Saren tore his gaze away and fixed it on Shepard.

"Then I'll need more than this overdesigned piece of junk-" he hefted the cybernetic arm "-to fight. Armor. Weapons."

Shepard turned off the projection and cocked her head to the side. "Let's start with you being able to hit me harder than a love tap."

* * *

"So much for human nobility," said Saren that evening, biting back a groan as he nursed his aching muscles. "You're an underhanded bitch."

"This coming from the guy who nearly choked me to death. Twice." Shepard winced, wiping medigel on the scrapes along her midriff and legs. Saren might have been on an operating table until this morning, but Miranda had treated him well if not kindly. His muscles hadn't atrophied significantly, and he was still far more experienced than she was.

"I'm not doing this for fun, Shepard."

She grinned at him then. "We humans have a saying. 'Winning isn't everything-it's the only thing.'"

Saren considered it for a moment before tentatively returning her grin with one of his own. It was as though the muscles in his face had forgotten how to do it.

"I like that," he said.

He was exhausted, absolutely aching from head to toe, and he was pretty sure some of Shepard's more solid punches to the face and waist had undone some of his physical recovery. But it felt _good _to be doing something, anything, and getting to punch Shepard certainly was a perk.

They fell into a routine, sparring for just an hour or two at a time at first, then a few hours between meals. Saren couldn't help but feel a kind of savage pride after the first week; she, not he, was the one insisting they needed a break.

"Look, Lawson does good work, but I don't want to see the look on her face if I tell her I broke you," she said after a particularly brutal fight that resulted in Saren gasping with mild shock after he bit down on her hand. He had to concede the point. Dying wasn't going to do anyone any good.

It didn't occur to him that two weeks prior, he wanted nothing more than for her to kill him.

Shepard spent her evenings in his medical room, patching up her own wounds and going through the Alliance's intel on the mysterious disappearance of the colonists. She seemed to expect him to have some grand insight, but he told her irritably that he was as stumped as she.

The truth was that though he did know more about the Reapers than she did, it was...fuzzy. Fading. Any time he tried to think of concrete facts, it slid away like sand. He had a nagging suspicion that the removal of the Reaper implants had something to do with it, but he certainly wasn't going to tell Shepard that. His knowledge was the only reason he was alive at all.

"You've been very quiet," said Shepard one evening as she answered email from her increasingly suspicious old captain.

"Unlike some, I don't feel the need to chatter."

"Ouch. Sourpuss."

"What?"

"Never mind." She groaned and rubbed her temples. "How the hell am I going to keep Captain Anderson from finding out about this?"

"Don't be an idiot. This is going to get out eventually, especially if you're dragging me to human colonies on the Traverse." He didn't need to remind her of the irony; it hung like fog in the air. "Better sooner than later with Anderson."

"What, are you banking on him shooting you or something?" she said thoughtlessly. She expected Saren to brush it off or even fight back as he usually did, but instead, his mouth dropped open slightly. He looked down at his hands resting in his lap, one of metal and one of flesh.

The world blurred a little again and spun around him. He vaguely noticed Shepard getting to her feet as sounds expanded and colors swirled. The dissociative episodes weren't as bad now, but they still came and went. He closed his eyes and waited until it had passed.

He looked back up at her; she had her hands clenched, little human nails digging into her palms. A nervous gesture. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Saren stopped her cold.

"Tell Anderson what's happened," he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "If you can convince me to live, you can convince a simpleton like him of anything."

For the first time in years, Shepard found herself without words. She just stood there and gaped at him blankly until he looked away, fiddling with his cybernetics. Shepard snapped herself out of it and left the room, but not before looking back over her shoulder.

He was looking right back at her.


	6. Chapter 6

She knew Anderson deserved to be told face-to-face, or at least in a conversation. She knew sending him a curt email with just the facts would be a slap in the face to the man who made her a Spectre. But she couldn't do it. She could face down a Reaper without fear, or maybe a whole army of batarians, even tolerate Lawson's open distrust of her decision.

But every time she pictured the look on her old captain's face, she felt sick with fear. Not the kind of fear that Saren had once inspired. That fear burned like cold fire inside her; it cleared her mind, drove her to either run or fight like hell. This dull, low terror just made her want to hide in a corner and vomit.

Shepard dropped her head between her hands and resisted the urge to down her third scotch of the evening. She rarely drank, and she wasn't technically on duty, but it was a terrible idea. She replaced the cork and shoved the bottle back onto the shelf in her spartan quarters.

"Fuck. God fucking damn it all." She got to her feet and headed to the bathroom, splashing water across her face.

She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and thought of Saren.

That pretty much killed her brief foray into self-pity. With a slightly twisted grin at her reflection, she had to concede that however bad it got, she was still better off than her old nemesis. She had little right to complain.

The tap-tap of metal on metal echoed through her room. Shepard quickly dried herself off before opening the door to find Saren standing there, looking...strange.

She couldn't place what was different. Just stared at him in puzzlement. Then, he opened his mouth and said what she'd been waiting to hear for weeks.

"I remember."

* * *

The clock on her bedside table read 0312, but Shepard hardly cared. Saren was on her console, she on her omnitool, both of them scouring the extranet for some kind of hint as to what his recollection meant. Shepard replayed his words for the hundredth time. The omnitool fed his voice into her earpiece, metallic and eerily reminicent of the way it sounded before Cerberus removed his implants.

"I wasn't alone. Not always. Sometimes I could hear others. A hive mind of sorts-not at all like the geth. Closer to the rachni, but still very different. I heard them whenever I heard the Reapers...all of them."

And then he'd fallen silent, the fire in his eyes dimming to a cinder. But this time, it didn't go out. He was here with her every step of the way, in the wee hours of the morning. Shepard knew she should tell Liara what she'd found...but she didn't want to. Not yet. For the moment, this was something only she and Saren knew. Some part of her wanted to keep it that way.

Saren had been silent for a few minutes, sitting perfectly still in her chair with his eyes closed. She didn't think anything of it until he turned away from her, his shoulders shaking with tension.

"There's nothing else," he said blankly. "Every time I try, I-"

The song he'd once worshipped and craved now filled him with an almost physical revulsion. He usually heard Sovereign, not the full chorus of the Reapers. But when he did-

"It's a much better start than I'd have shooting in the dark," said Shepard slowly, getting to her feet. "Just sleep on it. I'll finish up here."

Reality started slipping from him again, but he wrenched it back ruthlessly. He struggled with it for the better part of a minute. Pushing his memories also pushed the limits of his recovery, and he knew he was doing himself no favors. When his mind was his own again, he could feel Shepard's human hand resting on his non-cybernetic shoulder. He looked at her and felt her recoil, uncertain, at the intensity of his stare.

Saren got to his feet slowly, stiffly. He seized her hand in his natural one and stood over her, cybernetic arm supporting him against her desk. He kept his eyes fixed on hers.

No fear. She looked confused, startled even, but unafraid. After so long in the shadow of the Reapers' apocalypse, her lack of fear drew him in unwittingly, like matter to the heart of a singularity. Saren opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he closed the distance between them and leaned down until their faces were inches apart.

He could feel the dissociation trying to creep up on him, but with her in his grasp, he had an anchor. And his demons had no foothold. He closed his eyes and squeezed her hands in his until at last, the tendrils of madness began to slink away...perhaps for good.

He couldn't recall the last time he'd had contact like this, and reflexively, he reached for more. Both hands worked their ways up her bare arms. His forehead pressed against hers, human hair tickling his skin.

"Saren?"

"Shepard."

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?"

He blinked. She'd pulled one hand from his grasp and placed the other on his chest, firmly pushing him away. He stumbled back into the chair at her console, looking up at her.

"This is what you were after all along," he said slowly. "Replacing one crutch of mine for another."

Shepard stood in a sort of daze, rubbing her sore hands absently. Why couldn't he understand? She wanted to free him of the indoctrination, as she'd freed Shiala on Feros.

"Funny how a few weeks can make up for a decade," Saren continued.

Something flickered in her memory. Something triggered by his words. She tried to block the growing realization of what she'd done...not unlike Saren mere weeks ago.

"I have to hand it to you, Shepard. It's inventive." Saren gave a bitter laugh.

Shiala only broke free of Sovereign when its control was replaced by the Thorian's. Matriarch Benezia never broke free. Shepard stared at him, the weight of a man's existence suddenly crashing down on her shoulders.

She hadn't freed Saren. She'd only left a void behind when his implants were torn from him, a void that he inevitably filled.

She'd stepped into Sovereign's shoes.

Shepard fought the self-loathing that welled up inside her like poison. Instead, she pulled up the other chair and sat down beside Saren.

"If I said I only want to free you," she said, almost keeping the shaking from her voice, "would you believe me?"

No, said his years as a Spectre. No, agreed every rational bone in his body. No, whispered the ghost of his brother, the burden he'd carried his entire adult life. She was _human_. His former enemy, one who had no reason to care about him apart from his value as a source of knowledge...an ace card he'd just lost.

"Yes," he said, defeated.

He didn't know it. He felt it. Felt it so deeply that it didn't matter what 20 years of common sense as a Spectre taught him.

She reached for him this time, placing her hand next to his, fingers just touching. Saren shivered, but didn't move.

Spirits have mercy on them. She really did want to save him. And he really did want her to succeed.

Shepard was the one who got to her feet. She walked away. She was the one who could. She headed straight for the showers. Not even bothering to take her clothes off, she turned one on, dousing herself in chilling water.

It didn't take long before she was shivering, but the icy water cleared her head, made her think. She turned the tap down from a torrent to a stream, eyes closed, head resting against the smooth tile wall.

Now, she understood just a little of how Saren felt, what it was like to intend one thing and end up doing its opposite. Saren ended up responsible for the destruction of the Citadel Fleet and the near annihilation of the galaxy. With a bitter smile, she had to concede she'd gotten off rather easy.

She turned off the tap with a sudden snap, shaking her sodden hair out of her eyes. The click of bare talons on tile behind her made her flinch, though her shivering probably hid it from Saren's eyes.

"Humans are ridiculous creatures," he said, voice echoing in the long and narrow room. "Are you trying to give yourself hypothermia?"

Shepard glared at him. "We're not pansies about the cold," she said pointedly, grabbing two towels from the rack. Saren gave her a deeply skeptical look. She tied one around her waist, wrapped the other around her head, and removed her soaking wet shirt, the fabric hitting the tile with an oddly loud slap.

Saren watched, torn between unwilling fascination and revulsion. This human, this dripping wet mongrel, had bound him to her, as irrevocably as if she'd tied him up with steel cables. And worse, he wasn't sure if he wanted her to let him go. He didn't even know how much of it was really her...and how much was just the need to fill the void left by Sovereign.

"Where I come from, staring is impolite," she said, now toweling off her hair. Saren clicked his mandibles, but he did leave the room, stopping just outside the door.

"And where I come from, refusing to own up to your actions is immoral," he said quietly.

Shepard let out a growl of frustration, and he heard another wet slap as the rest of her uniform hit the tile. "What do you want me to do, beg for forgiveness? I'm sorry. I'm really fucking sorry."

He sighed, hitting the back of his head against the doorframe with a quiet thunk. "I know."

They both heard the implicit words. _So am I._

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of cloth on skin. Finally, Shepard stepped out of the showers, wrapped in a long white bathrobe. She looked up at him and said slowly, "Just to warn you, I'm really bad about feelings."

"And you think I'm any different?" They looked at each other, then both burst out laughing. Slightly hysterical laughter, but laughter nonetheless.

"My idea of therapy," said Shepard between giggles, "involved beating the snot out of you. And it _worked_. What the fuck is the matter with you?"

Saren couldn't respond. He just continued to laugh, struggling to regain control of himself. He put a hand against the wall to support himself, felt Shepard lean her head against his shoulder, still chuckling.

When they'd both managed to calm down somewhat, Shepard took a step back. She felt better now, but the guilt continued to chip away at her. She couldn't imagine what it was doing to him. They started walking back to her quarters, Shepard looking down at her feet.

"Wouldn't it be easier if you really could just shoot every problem into submission?" she blurted out.

Saren gave her a slightly unnerving grin. "It works with most problems. But if it worked for everything, the Spectres would be full of krogan."

She snorted with laughter. She was starting to like that with Saren, she could say whatever the hell she wanted. She never was particularly good at filtering her thoughts, and now she didn't have to try.

She heard the beeping of her console inside her quarters. Email. Anderson. Shepard closed her eyes and swallowed, feeling faintly ill. Saren leaned over her shoulder, took one look, and turned on his heel.

"It's past 4 AM, Shepard. I'm getting some sleep."

She barely caught his words before he was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Shepard looked at the email, innocently glowing, waiting for her to open it and read. Had she too been kicked out of the Spectres for what might, in Anderson's eyes, amount to treason? Maybe the Alliance wanted her court-martialed, now that she was without her immunity. Maybe a team was on their way to her facility now to take them out. Maybe-

She clenched her hands into fists, forcing herself to stop. She felt ill with worry, almost physically so.

Her messages beeped again, this time from Miranda Lawson. The vid chat icon started flashing.

Desperate for something to distract her from Anderson's email, she clicked. Lawson's face filled the screen.

"Commander. No surprise that you're still awake," said Lawson, smiling slightly.

"I've got a bunch of bad guys to stop and one to rehabilitate," said Shepard dryly. Lawson lifted an eyebrow.

"And how is your project going?" she asked. "I trust his physical reconstruction was performed to specifications?"

"Yeah. He's healing a lot faster than I expected."

"And his mental state?"

Shepard bit her lip. She might owe Miranda Lawson for removing Saren's Reaper implants and physically reconstructing him, but that didn't mean she had to like it. Black ops, even Alliance, gave her the creeps. Every marine heard the whispered stories and rumors of their ruthlessness.

"Improving," she said curtly. Lawson looked like she wanted to ask more, but chose to hold her tongue. Instead, a stream of text appeared on the side of Shepard's screen. Cerberus's latest intel on the missing human colonies.

"Not much different from what you've been hearing from the official Alliance channels, really," she said. "Every team we've sent for recon finds the same thing: a ghost town. But we are spotting...anomalies in the data. Strange energy signatures recorded on the colonial surveillance cams before everything goes dark."

Lawson's face disappeared from the screen as she brought up an audio clip. "Almost all of the surveillance is disrupted instantly, as soon as the colony is hit by...whatever it is. But a few Cerberus technicians did manage to piece together a few seconds of audio from the medical equipment on one of the colonies."

It didn't make much sense to Shepard: a slow, low buzzing sound that reached a deafening hum, accompanied by scuttling and scraping sounds before everything went silent.

"You sure that's not static?"

Lawson reappeared, arms folded. "Please, Shepard. I'm not an amateur."

She thought about it for a moment, then said very slowly, "Saren mentioned something earlier today." Lawson didn't interrupt, but the gleam in her ice-blue eyes told Shepard she was very interested indeed. "Something about another presence when the Reapers took hold of him. A kind of hive mind, but not like the rachni. Or the geth."

Lawson frowned. "Another race under the control of the Reapers, perhaps, like the keepers. I'll see if we have any intel." With a nod and a beep, she was gone. Shepard had to at least admit that Lawson didn't bother with niceties. That was refreshing.

She copied the audio clip to her omnitool, then almost jumped out of her skin when the door to her room opened and Saren walked back in.

"You spying on me?" she demanded.

Saren raised a brow at her. "Don't be childish. I was trying to give you privacy before she called. I just didn't think your...human supremacist friend would be as forthcoming with me around," he said, his face taking on a nasty expression as he mentioned Lawson.

He motioned for her to hand him the omnitool and listened carefully to the clip. He closed his eyes and shuddered. That was exactly it. The sound of his nightmares, brought into cold reality.

This time, he didn't lose it. This time, he knew exactly what he needed to keep from slipping into the abyss. Saren reached out blindly for Shepard, felt her catch his hand in hers. He squeezed as hard as he dared without snapping her little bones until he stopped shivering.

When he opened his eyes, she was regarding him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. "Next time you're about to manhandle me, warn me first."

He merely eyed her coldly, refusing to rise to her bait. "I know that sound. It's the same one I heard from the Reapers."

Instantly, her expression changed. "You're certain?"

Saren didn't even bother with a snide remark. "Get some sleep, Shepard. I'll work on this for a few hours."

She crossed her arms, her face taking on a very familiar stubborn cast. "How am I supposed to sleep now that I know all this? And what about you? You're still recovering."

His eerily blue eyes flicked from the bottle of whiskey on her desk back to her. If she didn't know better, she'd say he was joking. But as much as she hated to admit it, he was right. Her mind might be working frantically, but her body cried out for rest. She hadn't brought him back just to ignore his occasional moments of good sense.

Shepard kicked back two shots. Saren settled himself in front of her console, mulling over Miranda's intel. It took him a moment to realize she was waiting for him to leave before getting into bed.

He didn't budge. "You have the only console with this data, and your Cerberus friends sent over a lot," he said evenly. "If you can't sleep with me around, go to the medical bay."

It took some gall to try and kick Commander Shepard out of her own room. She merely glared at him before stripping off to her underwear and climbing between the sheets. Saren didn't even glance at her once.

He waited until he was certain Shepard was asleep before booting up Anderson's message. He was positive she'd hate him for what he was about to do, but it had to be done. If she wasn't strong enough to own up to her old captain, Anderson needed to be removed as a factor for Shepard to focus on this shadowy new threat.

It was cowardly, of both him and her, but he couldn't really blame her, not with Nihlus still haunting his nightmares. Even the thought of his old friend made him sick at heart. But he couldn't undo what had been done to Nihlus; he COULD do something about Anderson.

The human captain's email was short and to the point, asking her what the hell she'd been up to dropping off the grid, and whether the rumors about some secretive science project were true. Saren gave a derisive snort at the idea of himself reduced to a science project. He didn't have his old Spectre authorization codes, but from what information there was on Shepard's console, he could mimic hers given a little time. An hour later, he was into Shepard's Spectre files.

A human might have pried, given this opportunity. Saren was nothing if not a professional. He read nothing, touched nothing. All he did was construct what would appear to be an automated message from the Spectre offices at the Citadel, tagged with Shepard's authorization. The message redirected Anderson and the Alliance to the Council, telling them Shepard's recent business was strictly Spectre-only.

He knew Anderson. The idiot never kept his nose out of other people's business. But with the Citadel still reeling from Sovereign's attack, he was pretty sure the misdirection would stall both Anderson and the Council long enough for Shepard to disappear with him into the Traverse.

Without any hesitation, Saren clicked "send." A Spectre does what he must.


	8. Chapter 8

Saren awoke with a start the next morning, head resting on the desk beside Shepard's console, to the sound of...laughter?

Before he could sort himself out, the door to Shepard's quarters burst open and she ran in, hauling him out of the chair by his synthetic arm. "Come down to the docking bay!" she said, positively dancing with excitement. "You've got to see this, Saren, you've really got to see it!"

She was _happy_, he realized with a start. For the first time since he'd met her, both before his reconstruction and after, she was happy.

That weirded him out more than anything else.

Saren yanked his hand out of her grip, staring down at her with his brows raised. Undaunted, Shepard grabbed his other arm and tugged a very reluctant Saren across the small station to the docking bay. She opened the airlock doors, practically hopping on the balls of her feet as the decontamination filters swept over them.

On instinct, Saren put a very firm hand on her shoulder to stop her fidgeting. "You're behaving like a child," he grumbled. "Stop it."

"You will be too after seeing this beauty," she shot back, her mood completely undampered by Saren's sour expression. The inner airlock door slid back with a hiss. "Welcome home, you crazy turian bastard."

Saren didn't exactly dance, but his expression was unmistakable. His jaw dropped, and a feeling of painful familiarity clenched his throat. He couldn't speak, just looked from Shepard to the cockpit with disbelieving eyes. She very gently took his hand and led him inside, little human fingers warm against his metal and cables. Saren closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten as the airlock closed again behind them.

He opened his eyes. It was still here.

"The _Impera_," he whispered. "How-"

"Cerberus got her out of impound from the Council," said Shepard, letting go of his hand to run her fingers over the new navigation interface. "I don't really want to know how. But they also completely refitted her. She has a prototype stealth system now, like the Normandy."

Saren barely registered what she said. He sank into the pilot's seat, frowning a little at the slightly off fit. He'd lost weight since he last took the helm of this ship. A VI interface blinked into life in front of him.

"Biometrics profile recognized. Unlocking navigation. Welcome, Saren Arterius. It has been nine years, four months, and eighty-seven days since your last arrival on this vessel."

He swallowed hard, determined not to let Shepard see the pain on his face. Getting to his feet, Saren did a quick once-over of the ship, the juxtaposition of familiar and bleeding-edge new setting his nerves on edge. At least Cerberus hadn't thrown in anything that wasn't necessary; the _Impera _was still spartan and clean, just the way he remembered.

His old sleeping quarters were still there, as was the combat training sim room. The extra storage space had been turned into smaller sleeping quarters, presumably for Shepard. And even Saren had to be impressed by the updated drive core, guns, and stealth systems.

Shepard watched him come back to the cockpit, his expression carefully neutral. "You ok?" she asked.

Saren snorted at her. "This was your idea, I take it." He ran talons absently over the dark metal walls. "My old ship, before Sovereign. Sentimental. Foolish. It would've been more cost-effective to build a new corvette than retrofit this thing."

She narrowed her eyes. "So what if it was my idea?" she said, somewhat defensively.

He shook his head. "You misunderstand. I'm glad it wasn't Cerberus who came up with this, even if they did provide the technical expertise. I..."

"Thank you," he finally said, the words unfamiliar and strange in his mouth.

Shepard blinked, then gave him the first real smile he'd seen from her.

"You're welcome," she replied.

A rather awkward silence fell in which neither Saren nor Shepard knew what to say. Finally, the turian brushed past her brusquely and settled himself back down in the pilot's seat. Ten years of data poured from his omnitool into the onboard VI's data systems.

"You should do the same with your information and the data from the Cerberus. Pack anything else you need from the station."

He could feel her narrowing her eyes at him. "Why in such a rush?" she asked suspiciously.

"The sooner we get into the Traverse, the less likely the Council will find out what you've done."

"...what did you do?"

Saren didn't answer, listened as she stormed out of the ship for the airlock. He sighed and rubbed his temples. Humans. He finished the data transfer, making his way to his old quarters.

Shepard might have been a sentimental idiot, but he had to admit that the familiarity was comforting. Cerberus had even stocked the ship with provisions and supplies. Curious now that he had the _Impera _to himself, he went over the vessel in greater detail.

It was still shaped the same as before; a long narrow communal area with rooms branching off to the sides and back. Something caught his attention in the engine room. The ship had been meant for his use alone. But all of its upgrades meant it would need a bigger crew...or perhaps a more advanced one.

"You're not just a VI, are you?" he asked the thin air. After a brief pause, the computer's voice came over the intercom. An imitation of a human female voice, he noted.

"I am a fully functional navigation, targeting, and data analysis suite for the _Impera _with limited artificial intelligence programming."

"Where's your hardware located?" Saren demanded.

"My hardware is physically isolated from the ship's systems in the loft above your quarters, Saren Arterius," the voice replied. "I am unable to interface with the ship's systems except during combat, or with express permission from Commander Shepard."

Saren growled. Cerberus giving Shepard control over the AI didn't escape his notice. "Fine," he said at length. He powered up his omnitool, combing the ship for tracking beacons and listening devices. The AI didn't stop him.

After he'd disabled all the bugs, almost an hour had passed and Shepard still wasn't back. Saren was about to go looking for her when the airlock flew open and Shepard walked in, a luggage bag slung under her arm.

He braced himself for her fury, but she didn't say a word. She just made her way to her quarters, unpacking as though nothing had happened. Saren gritted his teeth. Shepard when pissed was one thing; deliberately giving him the cold shoulder was something else altogether.

He marched into her room without preamble. She didn't even turn around to look at him.

"Not even going to yell at me?"

She froze. Then she turned around slowly.

"You had it figured out before I did," she said with forced calm. "By bringing you back, I pretty much turned my back on my old crew, on Anderson, even on the Council. None of them will excuse what I've done when they find out. Not unless we get to the bottom of what's going on with these human colonies."

Every time he thought he had her figured out, she went and threw him for a loop.

"It's...a heavier price than I thought I'd be paying," Shepard went on. "If you want to say 'I told you so,' you can do it now."

He shook his head, turned away to give her some privacy.

"I'll be in the cockpit if you need me," he said over his shoulder. "Don't spend too long with your existential crisis; you need to meet the ship's new AI."

He heard a soft snort from her before the door closed behind him. He'd give her another hour or so to unpack and sort herself out. If she took too long, another knockdown, drag-out sparring match would jolt her out of her self-pity.

Saren opened up the navigation interface, plotting a course for Omega.

If it was just going be the three of them against whatever the hell was out there, they needed bigger guns.


	9. Chapter 9

Saren Arterius's old ship had no copilot's seat. Shepard kept to her room while he set a path for the relay, putting all her things away. She liked the _Impera_: fast, sleek, and quiet with all the cutting-edge where it counted and not a credit wasted on meaningless luxuries.

She sat down on the standard military-grade bunk and kicked off her shoes, dangling her feet over the edge. "Hey, uh, AI?" she asked the ceiling awkwardly.

"Ready," the artificial female voice said immediately. "It is good to see you again, Commander Shepard."

She frowned. "Again? I'm pretty sure I blew up each AI I met."

"Cerberus performed a covert black-ops recovery of my essential hardware from the Luna base where I...awoke."

Shepard found herself gaping at nothing in particular. The crazy thing she'd shut down on Luna was now flying her ship? It didn't help that the voice was metallic, flat, completely without any kind of human inflection. It reminded her chillingly of Sovereign.

"You have not spoken in 4.5 seconds," said the AI into the silence.

Shepard threw up her hands, not sure if the thing could even see her. "You _were_ trying to kill me the last time we met."

"Cerberus has updated my programming and isolated my hardware. I am also subject to behavioral restraints. Operative Lawson deemed a shackled AI necessary to the successful completion of your mission."

Shepard snorted. "I suppose Saren was trying to kill me the last time we met too."

The voice didn't respond. Finally, Shepard asked, "You got a name or something?"

"My serial designation can be accessed from the ship's navicomputer," replied the AI.

Shepard got to her feet and made her way to the cockpit, but before she could peek over Saren's shoulder from where he sat in the pilot's seat, he turned around and fixed her with his steady stare.

"The geth might have been pathetic in their devotion to Sovereign, but I learned a thing or two from them about artificial intelligence," said Saren coolly. "They are as different from organics as it is possible to be, but it doesn't preclude sentience. Or understanding."

It took Shepard a moment to realize he was trying to tell her to be nice to the ship. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Why do you care?"

The AI suddenly cut in. "I am aware of Commander Shepard's past experience with artificial intelligence. I am not programmed to be offended."

"That's not the point," Saren snapped, though he sounded less irritated with her than he was with Shepard. "I'm stuck with you-" he jabbed a finger in the Spectre's direction "-and this is the ship Cerberus gave us, AI and all. You go to war with the army you've got."

Shepard sighed, giving him a once-over. He looked far better than he had in the immediate aftermath of his reconstruction, but ugly scars criss-crossed his body, and the haunted expression never left his eyes. She caught the hint of her own reflection in the glass; she looked paler too, with dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep.

"Some army we are," she grumbled, conceding defeat. "One dead Spectre, one probably disbarred one, and an AI."

Saren looked at her thoughtfully. "Luna."

"You're losing it. I'm Shepard, remember?"

He ignored her, turning his gaze on the glowing navigational interface. "Is that an acceptable name? I can remember your 24 digit serial code, but I doubt Commander Shepard will bother."

Shepard might have protested if it wasn't the truth. She never had been much for tech. The AI was silent for a fraction of a second before responding.

"That is acceptable," she said. "Commander Shepard, with your permission, I will navigate our course to Omega so you can sleep."

Shepard looked uncertainly at Saren, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod. "OK," she said. "Thanks, Luna."

The AI didn't respond. Very quietly, Saren said, "It's polite to say 'you're welcome.'"

"You're welcome," said Luna immediately. Shepard could've sworn she saw Saren's mandibles flicker in a smile before he got out of the pilot's chair.

Rather than making for his quarters, Saren continued down the hall toward the armory and combat sim room. Shepard frowned at his back. "Hey, you might still be half machine, but you need sleep," she called to him.

She didn't get an answer except an absentminded grunt before Saren rounded a corner and closed the door behind him.

"Idiot," she said under her breath, heading for her own quarters and lying down on the bunk. The paranoid bastard wouldn't be able to sleep a wink until he'd combed over every gun in the armory, every inch of the drive core. Shepard, for her part, contented herself that Cerberus wouldn't pour as much money as they had into reviving Saren just to stick them on a sub-par ship.

Creepy AI aside, at least. She flipped over onto her stomach and tried not to dwell too much on Luna; as long as the ship flew right, shot straight, and didn't try to kill her every five seconds, it wasn't her problem.

An hour later, she still hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. Grumbling to herself as she got to her feet, she had to wonder if Saren's paranoia was rubbing off on her.

From the clicking sounds in the armory, he was still in there, no doubt modifying the weapons Cerberus had provided. Shepard hesitated for a moment, then went into his room. Saren left nothing personal in here; that wasn't what she was looking for. Instead, she pulled his chair from his desk and stood on top of it, unlocking the ceiling panel that contained the maintenance ladder. She fed the ladder down carefully, then clambered up into the loft area.

Curiously enough, Luna didn't say anything while Shepard poked around the truly dizzying amount of processing hardware located right above Saren's room. She knew better than to touch anything, but she could puzzle out the basics of how Luna was constructed. Cerberus had also provided them with a killswitch labeled in bright red letters just to the left of the entrance to this crawlspace.

"The code to render my hardware inactive is available on your personal omnitool."

"Shit, Luna!" Shepard jumped about a foot in the cramped maintenance area, banging her head painfully on the metal. Cursing and rubbing her head, she sat down and leaned against one of Luna's server hubs.

"I did not intend to cause bodily injury," said the AI. If Shepard didn't know better, she'd say the thing sounded almost confused.

"It's ok. Next time just, I dunno, turn down the volume or something," said Shepard. "Don't startle me like that."

Again, the AI didn't reply. It was a lot more talkative with Saren than with her. Shepard got gingerly to her feet and was halfway down the ladder into Saren's room when exactly what Luna had said hit home.

"Oh,_ fuck you_, Lawson," she hissed angrily. She dropped the rest of the distance and brought up her omnitool's interface; sure enough, there in her private files was the killswitch for Luna, filed neatly underneath the one for Saren.

The door opened behind her and Saren walked in. He narrowed his eyes at her, but seemed otherwise unsurprised to find her there. One glance at the ladder behind her and the readout on her omnitool told him everything he needed to know.

Rather than talking to Shepard, Saren addressed the AI. "I assume your...restraint mechanism is impossible to remove without damaging your core hardware."

"Affirmative."

At this, Shepard threw up her hands. "Does the goddamn ship have a self-destruct too?" She knew it sounded petulant, but she couldn't help it. "Luna, I-this wasn't my idea."

She didn't reply, but a flicker of something cracked Saren's otherwise impassive mask. "Not all humans are as foolishly trusting as you, it would seem," he said slowly. "I would've done worse in Lawson's shoes."

"And I wouldn't," Shepard replied fiercely. She expected the former Spectre to retort, but instead, Saren's bright blue eyes softened. He closed the distance to her and raised his natural hand toward her.

Shepard stiffened, but didn't pull away as he touched her shoulder. "I know," he said quietly. "It's why I'm still alive."


	10. Chapter 10

"This place is a pisshole," said Shepard as they approached Omega. She stood in the cockpit, pulling on her armor as Saren piloted them into dock. Most of the docking bays were on the upper levels, around the asteroid itself, but Saren steered the _Impera _toward one of the lower branches of the station.

"Avoiding what passes for local authority," he said shortly to Shepard's unasked question. "You don't want to meet the Pirate Queen of Omega."

Privately, Shepard thought that anyone she was likely to meet from here on out had to be better than Sovereign, but she held her tongue. It was probably too early to start making jokes about Saren's old boss. Probably. Instead, she routed her omnitool into Luna's databanks, bringing up basic information about the station. Her frown deepened as she continued to read.

"Tell me there's some redeeming quality to this dump," she asked Saren, who was docking them in what looked like a long-abandoned shipyard.

"A few." Saren got to his feet after adjusting the docking clamps on the ship. "There are two rules for operating on Omega: don't rock the boat, and carry a giant gun."

Shepard had to laugh at that. She didn't want to admit it, but she was getting antsy after so long cooped up in medical with Saren. He seemed just as eager to get going, locking down the ship in record time. It was good to see him in action rather than wracked by nightmares.

Saren led the way out the airlock after they both suited up. What had looked like an abandoned manufacturing shipyard from a distance was now obviously very full of life; vorcha, batarians, turians, humans, krogan...all jumbled together in some parody of a melting pot. Saren and Shepard certainly drew attention, but not for their faces as she'd feared-for their guns. She could feel Omega's masses eyeing the formidable weapons on her hip and back as Saren led her through a maze of tunnels and stairwells deeper into the station.

"Where are we going?" she asked him in a low voice, wrinkling her nose at the pervasive smell of sewage.

"Eclipse territory," he replied shortly. "I have a contact there who can help us with weapons and possibly give us information."

"Won't he recognize you?"

"I very much doubt so. I'm not exactly known as Saren Arterius around here," he said with the air of someone explaining arithmetic to an impatient toddler. Shepard made a face at him, kicking herself for her own stupidity. Of course Saren would have aliases in a place like this. No one out in the Terminus would knowingly give information to a Council Spectre.

They took a rickety cargo elevator from the lower level of the station into the station's manufacturing district, run by Eclipse. As the elevator rattled its way up the station's supports, Shepard said, "So I'm guessing we docked down in the ass end of Omega to avoid notice."

Saren nodded. "Thousands of people dock down there every day. All of them weak, poor, or otherwise useless to Omega." His calm, matter-of-fact tone sent chills up her spine. "In all my years using this place, no one ever noticed who I was."

"And now? Your face ended up all over the galaxy on the vids."

He fixed her with an unfathomable look. "Omega minds its own business," he said quietly. "It doesn't really care about me. Or you."

Saren let her mull that one over while the elevator doors opened into a mech storage warehouse. It had been years since he'd been here, but it was all starting to come back. Restoring the _Impera _to him was only the first step. Bit by bit, the life he lost to the Reapers was starting to return, like a half-forgotten memory growing clearer. He decided he liked the feeling.

Shepard stuck close to him, looking around at all the mechs. If Saren didn't know better, he'd say she almost seemed nervous. This _was _outside her comfort zone, but she knew better than to pepper him with questions here. Dodging the moving crates and conveyor belts nimbly, Saren made his way to the warehouse security office and rapped smartly on the door.

A salarian with blood-red skin and striking white facial markings opened the door, flanked by two armed security mechs. He visibly blanched when he saw Saren, barely even glancing at Shepard.

"Jaroth," said Saren with a cold smile. "It's been a while."

To his credit, the salarian recovered quickly. "You'll forgive me if I didn't exactly miss you, Dacius," he said testily. "And you've brought a friend this time. Excellent."

Before Shepard could even open her mouth, Saren intervened. "This is Allison Gunn," he said smoothly. "She and I have mutual business operations in some human colonies out in the Traverse. Ms. Gunn, Jaroth leads Eclipse on Omega."

To Saren's immense relief, Shepard caught on quickly, though she did give him a look that told him he was in for it when they could talk freely. "A pleasure, Jaroth."

Jaroth spared her a quick nod before turning back to Saren. "I thought you hated humans."

"I make exceptions to every rule. You know that." There was nothing in Saren's voice to indicate a threat, but the tension in the room suddenly eased...in Saren's favor. The salarian reluctantly waved his mechs down, returning them to sentry mode behind his desk. He sat down behind it and gestured for both of his unannounced visitors to sit.

Saren shook his head. "We're in a hurry," he said. "Whole human colonies out in the Traverse are going dark at a time. It's bad for business when no one wants to invest in...ah...security."

If Shepard didn't know better, she would've sworn the salarian visibly bristled. He didn't say anything, just gestured for his two mechs to flank the door. Four surveillance feeds flickered up on his console, and he painstakingly checked each one before drawing a deep breath.

"Blood Pack," he finally said in a low voice.

Saren raised his brows. "I doubt it. They're not known for their efficiency."

Jaroth shook his head impatiently. "No, they're not responsible, but they do know something. They miraculously pull assets from just about every colony before it disappears, and strangely enough, it seems to be the vorcha tipping off the krogan, not the other way around."

Shepard was pretty sure it was impossible to look more incredulous than Saren did at the moment, but before the turian could speak, Jaroth held up a hand and continued. "I know vorcha barely have enough brain cells to tell one end of a gun from another, but that's what our intel says. If I were you, I'd pull my money out of those damn colonies and reinvest elsewhere."

"That's not an option," said Shepard firmly.

"Well, that's your problem. Are we done here?"

Shepard looked at Saren, who gave the salarian a long, cold stare before nodding briefly. Without a word, he turned around and left. Shepard lingered for a moment to study Jaroth; she didn't like the thoughtful look on his face as his sentry mechs gestured toward the door. She waited until she and Saren were safely out of the Eclipse warehouse and back in the cargo elevator before rounding on him.

"You set me up," she hissed, jabbing an accusatory finger in his face.

He didn't even flinch. If anything, he seemed to be amused by her reaction. "I needed to make sure you're really as good as the Alliance claims."

"I beat you once," she said coldly. "Or have you forgotten?"

The instant the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Saren shut his mouth with an almost audible snap, an unfathomable expression in his eyes. He hit the elevator controls for the salvage markets of Omega; the rattling ride upward passed in an extremely awkward silence. When the elevator ground to a halt, Shepard booked it for the doors, but Saren caught her by the elbow.

"Do you remember what I told you about indoctrination?" he said in a low, flat voice. "The more control the Reapers exert-"

"-the less capable the subject becomes," she finished.

Saren drew a deep, slow breath and let go of her arm. "I hope you won't judge me based on that experience." Before she could answer, he swept out of the elevator, and she had no choice but to follow him into the markets if she didn't want to get lost. She gritted her teeth, muttering something uncharitable about turian stubbornness as she went.


	11. Chapter 11

Saren knew that Shepard wasn't the sort to hold a grudge, and he'd figured the Omega markets, teeming with deadly guns just waiting to be discovered, would distract her from his earlier gambit. But she maintained an irritable silence from the second they stepped into the markets until they were back on board _Impera_, restocking the armory with a gamut of very dangerous (and illegal) weaponry.

"So what would you have done if I hadn't caught onto your stupid little game back in Jaroth's office?" she finally asked, reassembling the components of a batarian harpoon rifle a little more forcefully than usual.

"I would've noted your poor infiltration skills. And probably shot Jaroth," said Saren without hesitation.

She rolled her eyes at him, scowling. "No wonder why Anderson couldn't stand you."

The mention of her old captain raised his hackles, as she'd known it would. "Then turn the ship around and go beg your precious captain for forgiveness," he hissed.

He expected her to fire back, but instead, she just gave him an infuriatingly calm smile. Saren had to resist the urge to audibly swear. She was testing him, just as he'd tested her on Omega. He took a deep breath and turned deliberately away from her, back to his work on what appeared to be a geth energy weapon.

Before Sovereign, before Shepard got her hands on him, he was always in control. No emotions, no petty temper, just the cold focus necessary to complete his mission. But now, he found it almost impossible to center himself; just about everything got under his skin in some way. Shepard merely happened to be the most obnoxious.

Mercifully, Luna interrupted his brooding. "I have accessed extranet chatter from the Blood Pack in the Terminus Systems and hacked into some of their secure transmissions. I can corroborate Jaroth's information."

"Find anything else on the Blood Pack?" asked Shepard without looking up from the anti-materiel rifle she was cleaning.

"I am sorry. I am uncertain how to process such a general query."

"What Shepard means to ask," Saren cut in, "is whether you have detected anomalous Blood Pack activities compared to known patterns from...let's say the last five years."

"Reassessing."

The AI fell silent. Saren counted to ten before adding, "Luna, I would appreciate being informed when you have finished your analysis."

"Understood," she responded immediately. That was a good sign; she was learning that organics liked feedback even when it was unnecessary in the eyes of an AI. He caught Shepard regarding him with a strange expression.

"Never figured you for a people person...so to speak," she said.

"I'm not," said Saren flatly. "Interaction with artificial intelligence is just simpler than with organics."

Her frown deepened. She abruptly shoved the weapons she was cleaning back on the armory rack, folding her arms. "Do you and I need to slug it out again, or something? Is that the only kind of normal interaction you understand?" When Saren didn't answer, she marched over and firmly but gently tugged the geth energy weapon from his hands.

"Leave me be, Shepard," he said, deliberately turning away from her. "I'm fine."

"...no, you're not."

Saren just stood like a statue, too astonished to move as she bumped her forehead against his shoulder, her eyes downcast. "You're a mess after Sovereign...after Cerberus. What you pulled back there was reckless and stupid and completely unlike you. And I have to keep reminding myself that I'm the one who couldn't just let you be at peace."

All the anger was gone from her voice. She took a deep breath, straightened up, and took a step back. "I would appreciate it if you were more open with me-no more surprises like on Omega. And in return, I'll be more patient with you. Is that fair?"

He stared at her blankly for almost a minute of very awkward silence. Finally, Shepard just shook her head and handed him the plasma weapon back, returning to her own work. It took another minute for him to find his voice, and when he did, all he could blurt out was, "Stop being nice. It's very strange."

For a moment, he thought Shepard was going to hit him, just like she had in the medbay. He was half-hoping she would.

Instead, she burst into laughter. "I'll stop being nice if you stop being an ass. Deal?" she said through her chuckles.

Saren honestly didn't know what to think or say. "Humans are insane," he muttered to the plasma gun resting between his claws.

Sudden static crackling through the ship's speakers saved him from having to deal with Shepard for the time being. "Analysis complete," came Luna's voice over the intercom. "Transmitting findings to your omnitools."

Shepard glanced at Saren; as one, they brought up the hologram the AI sent them, a map of the Terminus marked with all the colony disappearances. Superimposed over the planets were red markers for colonies with known Blood Pack holdings. Colonies where the Blood Pack had recently and unusually pulled resources were marked in green.

"Still doesn't answer the question of how the Blood Pack know this stuff," said Shepard thoughtfully, chewing her lip. The AI was silent at first; Saren watched with surprise, then approval as the Spectre rephrased, "Have you found any other strange patterns from the Blood Pack? Weapons purchases? Military operations?"

"Affirmative." The omnitools flickered again, this time bringing up an endless array of scrolling transactions tables. Luna skimmed down to a set of entries dated two weeks ago, when Saren and Shepard were still in the Cerberus medical station recovering his strength.

"Four sets of subjects to buyer through Golo on Omega," Saren read, his brow plates pulling together in puzzlement. "This is unlike Blood Pack. They deal in extortion and security, not 'subjects.' Their bookkeeping is rarely so vague."

"Ever run across this Golo before?" Shepard asked.

"I did not make a habit of consorting with every criminal on Omega," he said dryly. "I assume you have no useful knowledge about this individual."

"So what, back to Omega to knock some heads and find this guy?"

The omnitool readouts flickered briefly, and Luna came back on the intercom. "I am requesting permission to provide supplementary analysis, Commander Shepard."

Shepard blinked in surprise, instinctively looked at Saren, who gave her a barely perceptible nod. "Sure. Go ahead."

Luna zoomed in on Fehl Prime, on the outskirts of civilization even for the Terminus. "Blood Pack pull assets from otherwise profitable worlds within two to four solar days of colonial loss of contact. This colony fits the pattern. Analysis indicates the colony will cease communication in no more than 48 hours."

Saren immediately got the implication from the AI; it took Shepard just a moment longer. Wordlessly, the turian got to his feet and made his way to the cockpit. He was just sitting down at the controls when Shepard appeared over his shoulder.

"You're actually rushing off to rescue those people? Without my prodding?"

"I am not a heroic fool," he replied coolly as he steered the ship out of its rusty dock. "Impera's stealth systems will allow us to safely watch ship traffic around Fehl Prime. We do not need to be involved."

Shepard opened her mouth to yell at him, then remembered her promise to be more patient and drew a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes, counting to ten before she trusted herself to speak again. "You're just going to watch as all those people disappear," she said quietly.

Saren hit the reverse thrusters on Impera, stalling them mid-space with Omega behind them. He wheeled the pilot's seat around and fixed her with cold, calculating eyes.

"I am going to watch, and so are you," he said, as though he was explaining to an angry toddler why one and one made two. "We do not know how or why the colonies disappear. Whatever causes it is clearly beyond the scope of our abilities at present, and we are just as likely to fall victim to it. Or do you usually run into your missions blind?"

Shepard hated it when he was right. She watched in sullen silence as Saren plotted a course for Fehl Prime. It suddenly occurred to her that Captain Anderson would've done everything in his power to save the colonists, information be damned. It was not a cheerful thought, and she quickly tried to shove it from her mind.

"We are scheduled for arrival at Fehl Prime in 23 hours, 12 minutes," said Luna. "Stealth systems will automatically engage once within scanner range of the planet."

The former turian Spectre got to his feet. He took one look at Shepard's blank, hollow expression, her eyes reflecting the glowing star map on Luna's interface.

"It gets easier," he said quietly, heading toward his quarters.

Something like hate flashed in those human eyes just before the doors to his room closed.


	12. Chapter 12

"Fehl Prime is a primarily agricultural colony with limited mineral deposits in the mountain ranges of the southern hemisphere. Its 10.4 degree axial tilt results in mild seasonal fluctuation. Average rainfall is-"

Shepard groaned under her breath, leaning her forehead against the cool surface of the forward viewport. "Luna, that's enough." The AI had been spouting off the entire goddamn almanac on the planet below ever since they entered orbit a half hour ago. Apparently asking a computer to tell her all the information it had on a planet was a bad idea.

Saren briefly looked up from the holographic readouts Luna's sensors were feeding to his omnitool. "Commander Shepard intended a more specific query, I think," he said. "Please inform us of any immediate changes in activity on the planet's surface or in orbit."

"Data is being sent to both of your omnitools."

"I am sure Commander Shepard would appreciate being informed nonetheless."

"Acknowledged." Saren chanced a glance at Shepard, who was still refusing to look at him. He sighed and shook his head. She was the one who had brought him back; she should have known what she was getting into, how he operated. But even if she was being sullen, he could still conduct himself like a professional. He triple-checked the status of the stealth systems, then went back to the data.

Everything from the planet was perfectly normal, apart from a slightly unseasonable cold spell in the unsettled northern hemisphere. But Saren had not been the Council's top Spectre for nothing. There was a kind of tension in the cockpit, one that had nothing to do with Shepard's irritable mood. Something was going to happen. He had never relied on intuition in quite the way Nihlus did, but he knew better than to ignore his own instincts.

"Luna, upon my initial examination of the ship, I noticed it was armed with two prototype EMP missiles. Please explain their function, tactical use, and limitations."

"The EMP missiles are designed to circumvent a critical weakness of EMP technology, namely damage to the attacking ship. Missile is actually a misnomer. The iImpera's/i kinetic weapons can be loaded with a pair of metallic shells containing EMP charges. These are then fired and detonated either automatically upon proximity to a ship, or manually after they attach to the hull of a ship. This technology has not been tested in field trials. The EMP radius is limited, and unlikely to completely neutralize ships larger than standard Alliance cruisers."

Shepard's ears perked up. "You mean if we spot the people responsible for these abductions, we can cripple the ship?"

"EMP pulses do not discriminate between ship systems. Life support will fail, killing any lifeforms aboard, including the colonists if they are being taken alive."

Saren made a noncommittal sound between his teeth. "Of course they're being taken alive. If the colonies were just being wiped out, it would be more efficient to just kill them on the spot." He stared at the endless stream of raw data Luna was feeding him. Perhaps he was going about this the wrong way.

Fehl Prime, and the other handful of targeted colonies, were strategically unimportant and unremarkable. They had nothing out of the ordinary about them at all. Maybe that was the point. Maybe whomever was behind the attacks was targeting these locations because they would not provoke a significant response. He fielded this idea to Shepard, who took her sweet time in answering.

"Sure there's a response," she said shortly. "The Alliance was going to form a task force to look into this."

"You know as well as I do that task forces are political fodder," said Saren. A thought suddenly occurred to him. "Luna, are there any Alliance soldiers stationed planetside?"

The AI whirred and hummed for a moment. "I am able to detect Alliance communication signatures from the planet, but the data is heavily encrypted beyond standard security protocols."

iThat/i information got Shepard's full attention. She turned away from the viewport and opened her own omnitool, staring at the strings of gibberish letters and symbols Luna was receiving. It was like nothing she'd ever seen before. She turned to Saren, momentarily forgetting her anger at him. He seemed just as stumped.

"I am equipped with an experimental hacking and cyberwarfare suite, Commander Shepard. Permission to employ?"

"Yeah, go ahead," said Shepard absentmindedly. Her omnitool readout flickered a few times, and she heard whirring from Saren's room as some of Luna's previously offline hardware came to life. The two Spectres waited with bated breath.

But they never got a chance to see more than a few lines of garbled text become clear when the lights and engines suddenly powered down with an ominous shudder. Shepard dashed toward the ladder in Saren's room by the faint glow of red emergency lights and was halfway up it before Luna's voice came over the intercom.

"There is another ship approaching the opposite side of the planet, sending out massive sweeping signals. I have deactivated all nonessential systems to maintain stealth."

Shepard didn't know if it was possible for an AI to feel fear, but the quiet, almost hushed tone of Luna's usually expressionless voice made her shiver. "Luna," she whispered, dropping off the ladder. "Did you get anything on it before you shut off your sensors?"

"Based on the ship's relativistic effects on Fehl Prime's gravitational field, I have determined its approximate mass. Any further information would require activating sensors and giving away our location."

Saren's outline appeared in the doorway. "I thought we were stealthed."

"The ship's signals are unlike any in my database," said Luna. "They do not rely on heat emissions to detect other vessels. The vessel would likely have detected us if not for the planet in between." Saren and Shepard looked at each other, and Shepard felt her stomach clench with sudden dread. Stealth had been their ace in the hole, the whole purpose in coming here. If this thing could find them as soon as they so much as turned on a light-

"How large is this vessel, exactly?" Saren asked.

"The vessel's mass is comparable to that of Sovereign, the Reaper flagship destroyed at the Citadel. Its energy signatures do not match those taken from the Reaper, though there are significant similarities."

Shepard was the first to recover her wits. One look at Saren's face told her he had not anticipated this. He stood frozen in place, his pupils suddenly dilated despite the dim light. She rushed toward him and grabbed his shoulders firmly, wrenching him around to look at her.

"Come on, you turian bastard," she hissed. "Snap out of it!" When he continued to stare into space, she pulled her arm back and punched him in the mouth, as hard as she could. Saren fell back on his rear with a startled grunt, some of the daze clearing from his eyes. He rubbed his jaw slowly, glaring up at her.

"Was that necessary?"

"It's a tried and true way of snapping you out of your crazy," she retorted. Saren grumbled, but said nothing as he picked himself off the floor.

"Luna?" said Shepard, turning on her omnitool again for some extra light. "Is the other ship in orbit?"

The AI's servers whirred softly above their heads. "Negative. The vessel was entering the atmosphere in preparation for landing."

Shepard smiled in spite of their situation. That was perfect. "OK, new plan. How long do you think it'll take to land?"

"Based on the ship's mass and last known trajectory, about fourteen minutes."

"All right. Once it lands, turn on the engines and get us above that ship as fast as you can. We'll take as much data as we can, and as soon as that giant hunk of metal fires its thrusters, peel off orbit and jump to FTL. A ship like that will take time to follow us; we should be able to get to a safe distance if we're quick."

"And lucky," said Saren grimly. "Do you realize how many things could go wrong with this plan?"

Shepard raised her eyebrows at him. "Don't tell me you're iscared/i."

He was. The enemy ship's extraordinary capabilities and significant similarities to Reaper technology were too much to be coincidence. But he wasn't about to tell Shepard that. "Fine," he said, setting his jaw. "We'll do this your way. But don't bother bringing me back again if this doesn't work." He and Shepard made their way back up to the cockpit, Saren settling himself into the pilot's seat.

It was going to be an excruciating fourteen minutes.


End file.
